Colin Blythe
"Charlie" Blythe as caricatured in Vanity Fair, August 1910
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| Full name | Colin Blythe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
30 May 1879 Deptford, Kent, England |
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| Died | 8 November 1917 (aged 38) near Passendale, Belgium |
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| Nickname | Charlie | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Batting style | Right-handed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bowling style | Slow left arm orthodox | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Role | Bowler | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Test debut (cap 130) | 13 December 1901 v Australia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Test | 11 March 1910 v South Africa | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Years | Team | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1899 – 1914 | Kent | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Source: CricInfo, 6 April 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Colin Blythe (30 May 1879 – 8 November 1917), also known as Charlie Blythe, was a professional cricketer who played for Kent County Cricket Club and the England cricket team. He was a left-arm orthodox spin bowler and is regarded as one of the finest bowlers of the period between 1900 and 1914 – sometimes referred to as the Golden Age of cricket. He was named as one of Wisden's five Cricketers of the Year in 1904 and played in 19 Test matches for England.
Blythe served with the Kent Fortress Royal Engineers in the First World War and was killed in action at Passchendaele in November 1917. A memorial at Kent's home ground, the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury, is dedicated to Blythe and other members of the club who died on active service in the war.
Blythe first played for Kent in 1899, and in a stunning start took a wicket with his very first ball in first-class cricket. From then on, he was firmly established in the Kent eleven, and with 100 wickets in his first full season showed exceptional talent. An abnormally dry summer with unfavourable wickets in 1901 gave him what turned out to be his poorest record in first-class cricket in England; though, with Rhodes not permitted by the Yorkshire committee to tour Australia, Blythe surprisingly went in his place but did not prove a totally adequate substitute. On a crumbling wicket at the SCG he proved below his best and Victor Trumper's hitting mastered him very quickly.
However, in the very wet summers of 1902 and 1903 Blythe became one of the leading wicket-takers in county cricket and the undisputed leader of the second-strongest (after Yorkshire) bowling attack in the country. By this time, he had shown himself to be an exceptionally skilful bowler with the most deceptive flight of any spinner in county cricket. This skilful flight and ability to bowl, without change of action, a much faster ball that went with his arm (that is, from off to leg stump instead of from leg to off) allowed him to be successful even on dry and true pitches (as he showed against a strong Middlesex side at Tonbridge in 1903). On sticky or even slightly crumbled pitches, Blythe was almost always unplayable, and he was named as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1904.
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